November 23, 2010

Zurich, Switzerland, November 12th, 2010 – The 3rd International Holcim Awards competition offering a total of $2 million USD in prize money is now open for submissions. The open design competition is open to proposals for sustainable building and civil engineering works; landscape, urban design and infrastructure projects; and materials, products and construction technologies. The Awards are an initiative of the Swiss-based Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.

Entries must be submitted online at www.holcimawards.org by March 23, 2011. The competition celebrates innovative, future-oriented and tangible projects and visions from around the globe and is open to anyone involved with approaches that contribute towards a more sustainable built environment. The 3rd International Holcim Awards competition is comprised of five regional competitions in 2010/11 and the global phase in 2012. Step-by-step instructions on how to enter the competition are available at: www.holcimawards.org/guides

Holcim Awards (main) and “Next Generation” (student) categories
The main category of the competition is open to architects, planners, engineers, project owners, builders and construction firms that showcase sustainable responses to technological, environmental, socioeconomic and cultural issues with contemporary building and construction. Projects are eligible for the competition if they have reached an advanced stage of design. Construction (or commercial production in the case of materials, products and construction technologies) must not have started before July 1, 2010. In addition, the Holcim Awards seeks visions and ideas for the “Next Generation” category, open to student projects created within university programs at final year bachelor level or above (including master’s and PhD). The categories are separate so student projects compete against other student projects - same for the professional submissions.

Measuring up to “target issues” for sustainable construction
Submissions in both categories are evaluated by independent juries, using five “target issues” to define sustainable construction. Three of these align with the triple bottom line concept of balanced social, environmental and economic performance. The rest cover contextual and aesthetic impact, and innovation and transferability. For further details see: www.holcimawards.org/target

Nader Tehrani: Principal, Office dA, Boston, Mass.; Professor of Architecture and Head of Department of Architecture, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., USA

Support by world-renowned technical universities
The Holcim Awards competitions are conducted in partnership with some of the world’s leading technical universities. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) leads the Technical Competence Center of the Holcim Foundation. Other partner universities which host the independent competition juries are: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA; the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA) in Mexico City, Mexico; l’École Supérieure d’Architecture de Casablanca (EAC) in Morocco, and Tongji University (TJU) in Shanghai, China. The Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa, are associated universities of the Holcim Foundation.

100 prize winning projects in the first two competitions
In the 2nd Holcim Awards competition 2008/2009, almost 5000 projects from 120 countries were submitted. The 52 prize-winning projects included the global winners: Holcim Awards Gold – River remediation and urban development scheme, Fez, Morocco. Silver – Low-impact greenfield university campus, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Bronze – Sustainable planning for a rural community, Beijing, China. “Innovation” prize – Self-contained day labor station, San Francisco, USA. Details about the 100 prize-winning projects from both the 1st and 2nd competition cycles are available at: www.holcimawards.org.

The Holcim Foundation is supported by Holcim Ltd and its Group companies in around 70 countries and is independent of its commercial interests. Holcim is one of the world’s leading suppliers of cement and aggregates as well as further activities such as ready-mix concrete and asphalt including services. In 2009 the Group was confirmed as a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the seventh time in succession.

November 22, 2010

I don't think any other street in the world has quite a collection of contemporary architecture. Yes, it is all a collection of retail shops but the list of architects is a who's who of the top names in the world. If you ever go to Tokyo to visit, I highly recommend spending a day and an evening exploring this area and the surrounding alleys. Here is a fantastic guide to being an architecture tourist in Tokyo, built together by Tom Heneghan and myself "pooling our knowledge and experiences from various trips": Tokyo Architecture Tour

November 19, 2010

Design competitions are an ideal vessel to raise awareness and introduce a broad audience to issues affecting the built environment. Winning an award can have a significant impact on gaining public support or securing sponsorship for the respective project. The Holcim Awards is such a design competition: it promotes and rewards innovative approaches to sustainable construction.

One of the award-winning projects is the “The Living with Lakes Center” (above) in northeastern Ontario, Canada. The project will house a research center to aid the restoration of the city of Sudbury’s ecosystem with an emphasis on water security for future generations. The research center will be self-sufficient for electricity and heating needs and be built to LEED platinum standards with instrumentation fitted to monitor the effectiveness of an array of technical features and their impact on lake water quality.

The project is led by Laurentian University scientist John Gunn who remarks that winning a Holcim Award for North America secured vital funds for the project as well as assisted the project team in attracting financial support from Industry Canada and other sponsors for the USD 5 million project.

The Global Holcim Awards Gold 2009 winner, “River remediation and urban development scheme” is situated in the UNESCO World Heritage-listed city of Fez, Morocco. The project is a multi-sited, multi-functional project that is centered upon the recovery of a river. Work on restoring it triggers a range of interventions in the Medina. Core components are the rehabilitation of the old city’s architecture, revitalizing public spaces and traditional tanneries, and creating new pedestrian zones.

“The Holcim Awards brought international public attention to the river project and in turn triggered new rehabilitation initiatives in the city”, project architect Aziza Chaouni comments. The Medina of Fez continues to host new opportunities for sustainable urban development through a new competition for the design of a site for the nearby Place Lalla Yeddouna.

The 3rd International Holcim Awards competition offering a total of $2 million USD in prize money is currently open for entries. There are no restrictions to who may develop and submit new perspectives for our future. The competition seeks exemplary sustainable building and civil engineering works; landscape, urban design and infrastructure projects; and materials, products and construction technologies. Construction may not have started before July 1, 2010, entries must be submitted by March 23, 2011. More information visit www.holcimawards.org and check out our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/HolcimAwardsUS.

November 18, 2010

This is an incredible project that has recently partnered with Talkitect.com. I strongly suggest you watch the trailer below and explore their website. It is a fascinating glimpse into the lives of people around the world and how they adapt to the architecture they inhabit.

HIGHRISE is a multi-year, multi-media, collaborative documentary project about the human experience in global vertical suburbs. Under the direction of documentary-maker Katerina Cizek, the HIGHRISE team will be making lots of things. Web-documentaries, live presentations, installations, mobile projects and yes, documentary films. We will use the acclaimed interventionist and participatory approaches of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada’s Filmmaker-in-Residence (FIR) project. Our scale will be global, but rooted firmly in the FIR philosophy — putting people, process, creativity, collaboration, and innovation first.

Out My Window is one of the world’s first interactive 360º documentaries. Delivered entirely on the web, it explores the state of our urban planet told by people who look out on the world from highrise windows.

It’s a journey around the globe through the most commonly built form of the last century: the concrete-slab residential tower. Meet remarkable highrise residents who harness the human spirit — and the power of community — to resurrect meaning amid the ruins of modernism.
With more than 90 minutes of material to explore, Out My Window features 49 stories from 13 cities, told in 13 languages, accompanied by a leading-edge music playlist.

“This is stunning, merging the geography of the high rise and film”
- @PJHatfield, curator at British Library, on twitter

November 8, 2010

Another fantastic piece of architecture in Berlin. While living there, I worked for Pysall Ruge Architekten, the firm the was the local architects for this project. However, the master plan was developed by Berger + Parkkinen while each individual embassy was designed by a firm from the home country.

November 2, 2010

A book about books is always an intriguing concept, particularly when it gives insight into the thought process of people you look up to. In this instance, Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books, we are given a glimpse into the collections along with a top 10 list of books from 10 influential Architects: Stan Allen, Henry N. Cobb, Liz DIller and Ric Scofidio, Peter Eisenmann, Michael Graves, Steven Holl, Toshiko Mori, Michael Sorkin, Bernard Tschumi, and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. The book itself was conceived as part of an exhibition by the same name at The Urban Center in 2009. The participating architects also engaged in a series of conversations over the course of the exhibition with parts of the interviews featured in this book. Seeing the overlapping books was particularly interesting and has given me a deep list of books to find and read. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow appeared on about half the lists as did Robert Venturi's classic, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Perhaps the most interesting list was that of Liz Diller and Ric Scofidio, who are strongly influenced by pop culture and featured the incredible Sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stevenson and the food manifesto The Omnivore's Dilema by Michael Pollan. Of course one of my all time favorite books, which is featured in the library of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, is Harold and the Purple Crayon, an incredible story about the imagination and creativity of child who draws his way through landscapes and cities.

Overall, Unpacking My Library is a well designed book that is fun to read and full of departure points for further study. It is an excellent resource to return to when searching for books to help inspire, when looking for an intense novel, or when a glimpse into architectural theory is necessary.